“You never understood how that was with people, that they could tell you all kinds of things without saying anything.”
The seedy and privileged aspects of Dublin clash in this remarkable debut novel. Karl Geary relies on second-person narrative to depict the stark and devastating loneliness of Sonny.
A vivid first two chapters really sketches the characters and sets the tone for the remainder of the novel. A core tension for the reader involves the question of whether Sonny will ever stand up for himself, with the answer provided along the way -- as well as in an ironic ending.
“Your mother. Not so many years ago you would race home to her after school just to know she was still alive and hadn’t left you in that house of men, without a soft thing in the world.”
With a detached father (I selfishly wanted to know more about this man), overwhelmed mother, and nameless brothers, Sonny is almost literally a stranger in his own house, and he looks for companionship in Sharon and Vera, polar opposites.
“The dashboard lit some of his face, showed his age, and added more. Some years later, when he died, he would be buried without you ever touching that face.”
The author explores Sonny's occasionally disturbing relationship to sex, his inability to accept Sharon, and his hopeless pursuit of Vera. "Montpelier Parade" leaves questions unanswered in the most beautiful of ways, creating a gut punch of a short novel that will stick with you well beyond the reading.
Another Geary novel, "Juno Loves Legs," was a "Narrow Miss" in the 2023 Scooties, and you might expect to see "Montpelier Parade" finishing high in the Scooties again this year.
“You could taste the salt at your lips and held your breath for as long as you could, and for a moment you were between worlds, before being thrown from the water, fighting for that precious air.”
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